Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Tie Dieing

We went Camping on the 1st to Archers Camp ground Nerum creek, near Woodford. It is a lovely private site that only has limited camp sites available. So campers really get to enjoy the waterhole and natural environment, without fighting their way through the holiday crowds.

One of my favourite ABC Kids shows is playschool. As a young girl I looked forward to watching it everyday and wanted to live inside the useful box, with all it's craft tools and accessories. I still get joy out of it, watching it with my son. Rhody too has been effected by it's glorious feasts of art and craft activities. Occasionally he'll react to the daily art activity and ask if we can do the same.

A few days we before we went camping, they did tie dieing on Playschool. Rhody, turned to me and said "can we do dieing Mummy" Yes I said. I thought about it overnight and decided to get new white sheets and a doona cover for his bed. I decided that would be a fun activity for him to experiment with and take pride in his dieing achievement. Outdoors was the perfect place for this project. I bought 5 different coloured dies from the chemist. 5 bucket type things, boiled some hot water on the fire to dissolve the dye, then put the rest in the 5 buckets, scrunched up bits of sheet and Rhody dipped it into dye, then scrunched another bit of sheet and dipped it into another colour and so on. Left it for 5 minutes then rinsed dye out. When I got home I put them in a cold wash with a bit of powder to make sure I got all excess dye out. They look beautiful on his bed and he is very proud of himself.

About Me

Candice Herne is a visual artist working on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia. Working since 2002, Herne has exhibited Community Arts Projects, photographs, drawings, paper installations, paintings, and felted and natural fibre sculptures in solo and group exhibitions in Brisbane, Regional Queensland and Melbourne. A finalist in the 2005 Churchie National Emerging Artists Exhibition with her narrative painting 'City for sale' commenting on the boom in the Real Estate Industry. 2007 Herne started a progressive support and collaborative intiative 'Mothers Group' 2010 Herne travelled around Australia in a caravan with her husband and 2 children for 10 months, documenting, blogging, photographing and making small natural ochre pigment, paintings. 2011 Herne started grassroots Community Arts Projects and exhibited the work at the Pine Rivers Art Gallery Queensland Australia a part of the Group Exhibition Mamas in the hood-Mothers Group. The work titled 'School' a collaborative, interactive Pinata installation commenting on contemporary ideas about Motherhood, Art, Politcs, Community and Society. Herne's work is held in private collections in Australia.